My Friends

by Fredrik Backman

Louisa is a teenager, the best kind of human.

The evidence for this is very simple: little children think teenagers are the best humans, and teenagers think teenagers are the best humans, the only people who don’t think that teenagers are the best humans

are adults. Which is obviously because adults are the wor...

One time the artist read an article suggesting that people will soon be able to live until they’re one hundred and fifty, which Ted thought sounded unbearable, because at this rate he wouldn’t be doing anything by then except peeing.

‘Because I want to know what’s happening inside you! Because you happened to me! You happen to me every second I’m alive!’ ”

People say that anxiety is fear for no reason, but Ted’s brain is very helpful when it comes to providing suggestions.

Once he read a book that said that people with neuropsychiatric disorders need to “make friends with their brain,” but Ted and Ted’s brain are not friends, they’re classmates, forced to do a group assignment called “life” together. And it’s not going great.

The world is full of miracles, but none greater than how far a young person can be carried by someone else’s belief in them.

“Damned if I know… I don’t even think all the people who go to church every Sunday believe in God. I think they just need company. To feel that they belong to a group.” Kimkim nodded gently and replied: “But I don’t think that means that God doesn’t exist, Joar. I think maybe that’s what God is.”